Posts published by Geoffrey Perret

What the military needs now is a number of senior generals and admirals who are willing and able to debate the president and the secretary of defense — and a president and secretary of defense who are big enough to accept disagreement and even learn from it. This would re-establish a tradition that gave the armed services their greatest commanders and America a history of military victory.

Ever since George Washington was president, military officers and politicans have had lively disputes. Probably the most melodramatic came in 1933, when Douglas MacArthur protested deep cuts proposed for the Army’s budget. When Franklin Roosevelt refused to relent, MacArthur’s heated response was, “Mr. President when we lose the next war and an American boy lying in the mud with an enemy bayonet through his belly and an enemy foot on his throat, spits out his last curse, I want the name on his lips to be Roosevelt, not MacArthur.” He concluded by saying he was resigning (though he didn’t really). Roosevelt canceled most of the proposed cuts.Read more…

Since the founding of the Republic there have been 12 major wars in 12 generations, and the ultimate result has been a steady rolling back of the ideas that guided the men who wrote the Constitution. On almost any reading it is clear that the framers expected Congress, not the president, to be the dominant element in American government.

The presidency is mentioned in only a few brief paragraphs in the Constitution and is accorded less space than the role and responsibilities of the judiciary. It is Congress that declares war, raises military forces and finds the money for them. The role of the president is to be “commander in chief of the army and the navy of the United States and of the militia of the several States, when called into the actual service of the United States.”

What the framers had before them was the example of the British monarch as commander in chief, someone ready if need be to lead armies in the field. No one doubted that Washington could do that, and in the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 that is exactly what he did.

When John Adams became president, he appointed Washington to serve as commander in chief during the quasi-war with France. The Senate confirmed Washington’s appointment. And then in 1812, a British army closed in on the District of Columbia.

If anyone knew what the Constitution required it was President James Madison, one of its principal authors. In 1814, the bookish Madison strapped on a sword, mounted a war steed and led the Army out to stop the British at Bladensburg, Md. Two British musket volleys and a bayonet charge put Madison and his soldiers to flight. No one thereafter assumed that the president would act as his own field commander.Read more…